John 7:45-52 (NIV)
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards declared.
“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law–there is a curse on them.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”
They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

When the temple guards returned empty handed, it enraged the Jewish leaders. But the fact that they didn’t arrest Jesus said two very important things. First was that Jesus was not causing a disturbance on the temple grounds – the only real grounds that would have existed for arresting Him. In those days, long before the advent of amplifiers and microphones, when a respected teacher was speaking before hundreds or thousands of people, everyone tended to be very quiet so that they could hear well. Since the Pharisees had stormed off in a huff earlier, that quite attentiveness was the scene that the guards had found in the temple.

But the other thing is that the guards found Jesus’ teaching fascinating, compelling, and more interesting than any other teacher that they had ever heard. They found nothing subversive, theologically problematic, or dangerous in what He was teaching that would have given any possible justification for an arrest.

But the Pharisees, so confident of their own righteousness, and stinging because of Jesus pointing out their flaws and their misreadings of the law, were furious. If anyone believed in Jesus, it couldn’t be because he was right (which would make them wrong!). It could only be because they were deceived. It could only be because they were ignorant of the real intricacies of the law.

Nicodemus, however, challenged them, interrupting their rant in mid-phrase. The very law that they were taking their stand on did not allow condemnation of anyone or any teaching without a careful investigation into the facts of the case. But those leaders were not in any mood to investigate. They were responding defensively, emotionally and, in the end, irrationally, and would not be talked down.

Instead, they turned their wrath on Nicodemus, accusing Him of being ignorant of the Scriptures, and worse, a Galilean. Galileans were considered by the elites of the day, those who quartered in Jerusalem, to be a backwater area of the country, given to compromise and superstition, and able to be manipulated into foolishness by clever folks. To the Pharisees, the only reason that anyone would listen to someone from Galilee, or think that He might possibly be the Prophet or the Messiah, would be if he or she was a Galilean (that is, in their thinking, “an ignorant hick”) themselves. And they dismissively directed Nicodemus to go back to do some research, and he would see that the law said nothing about the Prophet or the Messiah coming from the northern part of the country. (Again, they hadn’t investigated, or they would have known that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judah, exactly where their Scriptures said that the Messiah would be born!)

Father, we can see this same kind of reactionary stuff going on in our society today. And, if we read further, it is easy to see that that kind of emotional defensiveness and ad hominem attacks lead to self-defeat and ultimately to ignominy. Help us, as Your people, to not get caught up in this kind of stuff when it happens around us, whether in the arena of politics, or church, or society in general, but to always be like Jesus: so focused on the work and the goals that You have given to us that we let the rest just roll off. Amen.